History of England 1-6

Despite these grievous blows the society of England held together. The courts of justice were closed, and the meetings of parliament were repeatedly delayed, but no general collapse of order occurred. The records of Church and state reveal a surprising continuity and coherence of administration. The level of wool exports, for example, remained stable. Yet the pestilence had slow but permanent effects on English society. The shortage of labour had the immediate result of increasing both the level of wages and the chances of employment. The phenomenon of the landless or impoverished peasant wholly disappeared. But the rising demands of the working people who had survived, their worth now doubled by the epidemic, provoked a reaction from the landowners and magnates. The knights of the shires, in particular, perceived a threat to good order.

An Ordinance of Labourers was passed by a parliament in 1349, forbidding employers to pay more for labour than they had before the pestilence. The same Act deemed that it was illegal for an unemployed man to refuse work. The measures were not realistic. Many workers and their families could simply move to another district and to a more generous employer who was willing to ignore the law. Some migrated to the towns, for example, where there was a great demand for manual labourers such as masons and carpenters. A ploughman might become a tiler. More than enough work was available. So from a court roll of the period we have the following entries.

Thomas Tygow of Hale is a freelance roofer and he took at Hale from Hugh Skynner of Little Hale on various occasions in 1370 a daily wage of fourpence and his dinner, contrary to statute; excess 3s. 4d … William Deye is a freelance ploughman and took from Gilbert Deye at Ingoldsby on 2 December 1370 3d and food, and did this for the rest of the week, and received the same from others in the following year; excess: 12d … John Couper, carpenter, refused to work by the day in order to earn excessive money, and he took a lump sum from William Bourton of Sudbrooke; excess estimated to be 2s.

Many younger people now possessed their own holdings of land. And the best land did not remain vacant for very long. There had once been too many farmers and labourers working too little soil, but now they were dispersed over the countryside. Some lords tried to tie down their servile population by enforcing the obligations and duties owed to them, but any success was balanced by the problems of a reluctant and disaffected workforce. As that workforce became more aware of its value, the old tradition of labour service could not hold.

Wealthier peasants were ready to take on more land; they left wills, written in English, to confirm their aspiring position. The relatively low cost of produce, and the incidence of high wages, encouraged many of the larger landlords to give up production and lease their farms to the highest bidder. Or they converted their arable land into pasture; the rearing of sheep required less investment of labour than the growing of crops.

The old manorial and village ties were being dissipated. The pestilence slowly began to dissolve, therefore, the old certainties of status and position; the traditional network of communal relations was being supplanted by the exigencies of private interest. There is evidence that the remaining people, on the land, now worked harder; manor accounts show that output per man increased, and that women often took over jobs previously reserved for men. Their wages increased proportionally higher than those of men.

In this context we can place the various ordinances and measures taken by the Lords and Commons to discipline the thriving peasantry. Legislation was passed to forbid the wearing of costly clothes, and to impose restrictions on the daily diet. Women were to dress according to the social position of their fathers or husbands, and the wives of servants were not allowed to wear veils above 1 shilling in value. The wives of yeoman were not permitted to purchase silk veils, and agricultural labourers were not allowed to wear cloth priced at more than 12 pence a yard (0.91 metre). A worker’s gown and coat must ‘cover his privy members and buttocks’, and the toes of his shoes or boots ‘must not pass the length of two inches’ (5 centimetres). This was in remonstrance against the fashion for tight-fitting and figure-hugging clothing, as well as the taste for elongated shoes. At dinner or supper the lower classes were to enjoy only two courses. Laws were also passed that prohibited peasants from carrying weapons or indulging in disorderly games. Idleness, if proven, could be punished. Despite these maladroit exercises in social control, the feudal England of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was coming to an end. The English poet, John Gower, wrote at the close of the fourteenth century that:

The world is changed and overthrown

That it is well-nigh upside down

Compared with days of long ago.